A New Value Discourse
Value Harmonics - Part 1 - Chapter 1
This is the first chapter in a series about values, in which we present a post-postmodern1 reframing of value discourse.
A new value discourse entails a new way of thinking and talking about values, and being post-postmodern means surpassing the limitations of both modern naivety and postmodern cynicism, at the bleeding edge of culture.
In Western thought, values have long been a contestable, vague topic—both in content and scope. Consider a corporation whose public mission statement proclaims “equity, transparency, and care,” though it strategizes and acts according to capitalistic logic and personal ambitions. Or a human life spent in pursuit of unexamined goals, only to arrive at predictable disillusionment. Or a nation or civilization that followed seemingly reasonable assumptions, only to find itself debasing so much in the process. More than mere ethical failures or incompetence, these seemingly disparate scenarios reveal a deeper, fundamental confusion about what matters.
Due to this confusion and vagueness—alongside historical and philosophical reasons we will explore—value discourse has become marginalized, at best, to idealistic musings or wishful thinking. Once values are properly recognized, value discourse may regain its rightful place at the center of cultural attention. Reclaiming value-clarity can change the world. Indeed, we will argue that it is where such a change must begin.
To this end, we will first disambiguate values, using a definition that is both precise and broad. As we will argue, values orient us in the world. If modern, global civilization is headed toward catastrophe, it is essentially disoriented—moving in the “wrong” direction. This, we will demonstrate, has to do not with superficial issues of mismanagement, but with much deeper value assumptions, and the very ways we have been thinking and talking about values heretofore.
Alongside philosophy, this exploration incorporates developmental psychology, trauma awareness, sociocultural systems theory, cross-cultural synthesis, and historical reinterpretation. By bringing the explicit and implicit into the same conversation, paths will be revealed where we now find only stalemate and conflict.
The West, caught in its own limited framing of the question of values, has come to impose its understanding on the entire planet—eradicating the value systems and sensibilities of countless cultures in its wake. Rather than cross-cultural dialogue, the West sought cultural domination, thereby reinforcing its own civilizational blind spots. The postmodern attempt to mitigate this has led to a sort of eclectic pluralism. Rather than pluralism for its own sake, a post-postmodern approach must tease out the persistent logic underlying diverse value systems.
This series unfolds across three movements: Part 1 explores the present, Part 2 reconstructs our past, and Part 3 reveals future horizons. Only through newfound clarity about the domain of values can we reorient toward a future worth pursuing. Let’s get to it.
Introduction
We last published an essay-in-parts about stories, titled Simplicity Complicity. More than mere works of fiction, stories—from a cognitive-mythopoetic lens—frame our perceptions, shaping the way human beings simplify and interpret Reality.
By investigating the dialectic between Reality’s complexity and our simplifying stories, we arrived at the concept of the Grand Meta-Narrative (GMN)—a story that is simultaneously grand and meta. The GMN is a post-postmodern existential stance that promotes complexity-sensitive reframing. It serves as a framework for the grounded recreation of stories and, through them, of oneself and the world.
Human beings inhabit layers of context. We either create or inherit these contexts—the stories that shape our perceptions and make our world. Simplicity Complicity was an investigation into the powers and limitations of stories, and how (post)modern people and societies have come to know themselves through their stories.
The stories we live in are continuously recreated. This mostly happens unconsciously as our default mode, following paths of least resistance. This is true, first of all, for the individual.
But the unconscious reaffirmation of narratives is, of course, not absolute or inescapable. Not only can our stories change, but we also seem capable of changing them consciously and deliberately. Simplicity Complicity explored the limits and potential of this capacity. Change the story, and the world changes.
Yet the series ended in a ‘cliffhanger,’ with fundamental questions lingering—How do we use our stories? What do we use them for? What forces shape a story, its purpose, and its telos? Though we could ask these as moral (normative) questions—How should this happen?—they can also be asked in practical (descriptive) terms—How does this happen? (Only if stories are created consciously can these questions become moral.)
How do our stories form?
Toward what do they orient?
What are they seeking?
What is their telos—their end—if they can be said to have one?
Consciously or unconsciously created, stories take us somewhere. They tell us where we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. Seeing as they propose to take us somewhere, we must ask: what are the underlying drivers that determine where that is? In other words, we experience reality through the filters of our stories—but why one story and not another? And why does our story develop this way rather than that? As a story forms, it does so around assumptions regarding what is worth pursuing, pulled as we are by invisible threads.
The next leg of our journey comes into view. Beneath the stories we tell ourselves about how we can get what we want is a subtler layer—one that determines what we want in the first place. These forces are called values.
Our stories shape our interpretation of, and orientation in, Reality. They are created in accordance with our underlying values. In this first chapter, we will clarify what values are and why we must learn to see them anew—especially in the liminal space between stories.
From Stories to Values
This is another foundational series for High Resolution, where we will be taking yet another (painfully ambitious) step in our post-postmodern reconstructive project. What follows is not merely a philosophical exercise, but the first of several moves to rescue value discourse from abstraction, restoring its centrality to our personal and collective futures.
Stories not only tell us where we are going; they are also our means of getting there. The right story—a story adequately grounded in Reality—can actually succeed in taking us where we are trying to go. Yet is it not foolish to strive toward a goal (attain it, even) without first taking the time to ask: Why did we want this? Is this what we truly want? Is there not something better toward which we should aim?
When one story ends, in the liminal space between stories, before a new story emerges to recontextualize our situation and reframe our perception, we stand in pure potential. There, we have the opportunity—and indeed, the responsibility—to examine the undercurrent: our values, before weaving a new story that takes them for granted.
With one foot in a dying story and the other seeking a foothold in an emerging story still in flux, we are called to clarify our values. In this way, we can avoid repeating the same old mistakes in new clothing, falling into stories that merely echo past missteps.
Value clarification is not unlike an exorcism of ancestral ghosts that haunt us with their misconceptions about happiness and the good life. We cannot be free before we’ve broken the chains that bind us to chasing false, unexamined goals, worshipping inert idols in long-abandoned, desecrated temples.
Only by tracing these undercurrents can we create the conditions for honest societal self-examination. We must pull value discourse out of abstraction and ground it in the lived crisis of our time.
Idols and Ideals
In this essay, we are not philosophizing about the Good as if it were a Platonic Idea. For Plato, the Good was synonymous with God. Before we go searching for God, or the Good—those ultimate ideals—we must recognize all the idols we find ourselves worshipping instead. By including both idols and ideals, we aim to bring “realism” and “idealism” into a single conversation. Clarifying these contradictions has always been important. Today, however, it has become urgent.
We are living through the metacrisis2 of modern civilization—perhaps its ongoing, slow-motion collapse. But moments of crisis can hold hidden opportunities, and the scale of our crisis hints at the magnitude of any treasure it may guard. What is the full potential hidden behind the modern metacrisis?
If we learn to discern what does and does not matter, we may claim what is arguably the greatest gift of the metacrisis.
Modern technology has made human societies more powerful than ever. Our stories determine how we utilize it. Stories, like the technologies we create, can be powerful. But we mustn’t rush to concoct stories meant to transform society; before we meddle with the narratival layer—releasing mythopoetic forces we may not be able to control once unleashed—we are called to examine our motives, agendas, and goals. We must ask and ask again—where are we trying to go, and why?
Risk and Reward
The themes of gravity and responsibility recur throughout our essays on narratives. Stories are what the human world is made of. Pulling on these threads too insistently can unravel the whole social tapestry. At the very least, one risks becoming out of step with one’s culture.
Some societies are more eager than others to dissuade investigators from peeking behind the veil—especially if the culture behind it is hollow or the society is hiding skeletons behind the curtains. Those who wrestle with sociocultural narratives are taking on a delicate task; even if an entire society is as hollow as a rubber inflatable, there are still plenty of kiddos jumping up and down inside. That is, right or wrong, a society carries momentum regardless.
The deeper the examiner strips away the narratival layers, the larger the void they may confront, and the more responsibilities left clamoring at their feet. Investigating one’s sociocultural narratives is a vote of no confidence in inherited pre-givens, shifting responsibility from the collective to the individual. In dire situations where this disillusionment is warranted, it becomes the burden—ideally a joyful, meaningful quest—of free thinkers, leaders, and revolutionaries to make sense of the situation anew.
Unlike managers or technocrats, genuine leaders must do more than tweak our route toward a supposedly desirable future. The full task is to look deeper, into the very desires—often implicit and obscure—that shape the contours of that desirable future.
Our unprecedented historical moment presents our generation—the pivot generation—with novel challenges. We were not born into a situation where we can rest on the laurels of stability and sanity, cultivated by a long, unperturbed intergenerational chain. We arrived at our current situation by taking some sharp turns, historically speaking, based on now-questionable assumptions. We find ourselves in a society lost, unreflectively chasing poorly defined metrics and superficial desires.
Now, past the peak of modernity, we are called to deconstruct the arbitrary society we have created and question its underlying values. Not to chase some intellectual high, but to reclaim the freedom and capacity to choose a better future. The stakes are high, and the task is clear. Let’s begin.
What Are Values, Anyway?
“Values” may seem like a fuzzy, vague term—one that means different things to different people. What do we actually mean when we talk about values? Why do we turn to this immense (and somewhat nebulous) topic next? We begin by disambiguating the term, offering a definition that is both clear and comprehensive.
In philosophy, the field that directly investigates values is called axiology (from the Greek axios, meaning “worthy,” and logos, meaning “study”). Even philosophically savvy readers would be forgiven for never having heard of the term. While ethical philosophy is a respected field of study in contemporary philosophy, the direct analysis of values as such has become somewhat marginalized.3 Nevertheless, if values can be studied directly, they are clearly upstream of ethics, morality, and so much more. In other words, clarity about values is a prerequisite for discussing how we should act. Any investigation of ethics without a preliminary clarification of values may simply take various social norms for granted. We must return to the more fundamental question of values.
For this, we use a phenomenological definition.4 This grounds values in human experience. In our definition, values determine the felt topographical contours of one’s field of experience. In this sense, values are like poles beneath a tablecloth: they create high and low points in our perception, determining what we aim for, what we avoid, what matters, and what we ignore.5 This does not mean values are merely qualities of objects. Values are field phenomena and can be felt even in their absence.
Rather than abstract concepts, this positions values as felt forces within experience. Values determine what we care about, shaping what we strive toward, what we protect, and what we dismiss or avoid—even when we cannot articulate them. This approach, however, differs somewhat from the way values are typically understood.
In common parlance, “values” may mean different things to different people, both in content (what is valued) and in scope (how values are understood categorically). Still, despite this ambiguity, even across cultural or political divides, interlocutors have the sense that they are discussing the same general phenomenon, even as they may be committed to different sets of values (value systems).
Philosophical and ethical inquiries often take this colloquial understanding of values as their starting point. In this common approach, values are the ideals—loyalty, freedom, or other noble sentiments—that people and societies are proud to paint on their banner and cite when asked, “What do you stand for?” But this everyday understanding cannot account for the most basic fact: what we value moves us, often beneath or beyond what we declare.
Public Values, Private Values
Our phenomenological definition is more down-to-earth—and, as we will see, more honest. It brings together the ideal values we valorize alongside those we might prefer to keep to ourselves. To adopt economist Timur Kuran’s distinction, we ask the question of Private Truths, Public Lies, as it pertains to values. While people may claim to value honesty or kindness, their actions often reveal other motives that run parallel, or even counter to, those lofty ideals. What, then, is the value of their values?
Typically, this glaring contradiction is explained: we have values, but as flawed and fallible beings, we may fall short of them. In this light, what is needed is a character trait or virtue—such as integrity, authenticity, or willpower—to “walk the talk” and actually live a life aligned with one’s values. After listing a few nice-sounding values, thought soon rushes onward to ethical considerations, for upholding these values in action.
There is some merit to this framing, but also limitations. Clearly, people aspire to embody high-minded ideals, although they often fall short; both the striving and the failing are common features of the human condition.
Yet, if we keep this frame, we confusedly discuss the values of a society or a person—the ideals they proudly declare—while these prove to be empty lip service, calculated propaganda, or even dangerous delusions with unintended consequences. At the same time, if there are private values more unpalatable or shameful than our public ones, and yet these are the ones that actually move us, they remain suppressed and banished from polite conversation—into the individual and collective shadow. By such definitions, these would not be considered values, but rather animalistic passions or shameful desires.
Are those who do not move according to society’s proclaimed values failing ethically? No. Rather, they are loyal to a different set of values—perhaps unarticulated even to themselves.
Pluralism, Cynicism, Superego, Id
All of this breeds a well-earned cynicism—a defining characteristic of our postmodern times. If, by “values,” we only mean these ideals, we must ask: Do they carry any weight, or are they simply political tools and virtue signals? We may declare that we care about certain things, but these may be nothing more than hollow tokens or, perhaps worse, unattainable ideas that hang over us in perpetual condemnation.
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, introduced his tripartite model of the psyche in The Ego and the Id (1923), which consists of the id, the ego, and the superego. The superego is the internalized voice of authority—parental and societal. Opposing the superego is the id, composed of compulsions and desires, typically considered animalistic or infantile in origin. But the cultural idealization versus suppression of values creates the very split between superego and id, which the ego must then navigate.
Rather than being beneficial forces, this approach makes values into internalized tools of control. Designed, at times, to condition whole populations, such values can form a tyranny of ideals, feeding a hyper-moralizing superego that condemns us for our human faults and entangles us in unrealistic expectations. Previously, this challenge was leveled at Christianity in a secularizing Europe, but it can just as well be leveled at any culture, especially as the gap widens between its private and public values.
Certainly, there have been paragons of integrity, both within and outside history, who demonstrated the possibility of a life lived in alignment with inspiring ideals. We do not dismiss the potential they represent. But can we truly claim the same values as great leaders and saints merely by ascribing to these in rhetoric? Something is amiss.
We propose a reframe of the issue: greed and revenge must be placed on the same map as generosity and forgiveness. For better or worse, these are all human values. While there are significant differences in their social outcomes, should they not all be included in the same analysis? Do they not play a similar guiding role for one who, explicitly or implicitly, publicly or privately, consciously or unconsciously, follows their command? Both greed and generosity are values in a comparable sense, guiding the actions of those committed to them—regardless of how we judge them.
This “subjectification” of values is characteristic of postmodern thought, where it leads to value relativism. If values are all subjective, how can any value system claim to be “better” than another? Greed and generosity are suddenly put on the same level. While we acknowledge both can act as guiding values, this does not immediately equate the two. The real tension—between the seeming subjectivity and objectivity of values—is exactly what a post-postmodern paradigm must resolve, and is one of the goals of this series.
Although we define values through this realistic, phenomenological approach, we do not ignore or dismiss the way the term is commonly understood, as referring to abstract ideals. Instead, we seek to maintain continuity while expanding and grounding the conversation in lived human experience.
Nominal Values and Lived Values
To maintain this consistency, we differentiate between two kinds of values. We define as nominal values those that cultures and people name and cherish. These are the values most commonly recognized as such—the ones typically listed or professed as “our values.” As implied by the term, nominal values may sometimes be values in name only.
Alongside nominal values, we introduce lived values—the actual, felt forces that move people, groups, and institutions. While nominal values are typically public, lived values are often private. Nominal values are general abstractions, whereas lived values are felt “force fields” in human experience. There are overlaps between lived and nominal values, such as when an individual truly feels the compelling forces of justice or fairness (as opposed to mere peer-pressure to act fairly) or, conversely, when someone openly admits their loyalty to culturally rejected values such as selfishness or racial superiority.
Typically, we are comfortable touting our nominal values publicly, while our lived values remain mostly private. Nominal values are like banners; lived values are like sails. Consider how corporations or politicians (and through them, whole nations) publicly present nominal values in service of their true, private, guiding values—their hidden agendas. We must therefore consider values more deeply than the surface layer of nominal values permits, though we should remain mindful of the real forces nominal values, too, may exert.
Clashing Values
If we define values phenomenologically—experientially—as the forces that shape what we actually care about, then the lived priorities that guide our attention, perceptions, and actions may surprise us. We may find the classically valorized values of loyalty, harmony, or fairness right alongside sexual conquest, money, prestige, or a slice of strawberry cheesecake. A mixed bag, to be sure. All these things may attract and move a human being. Still, one might object, aren’t some values “higher” than others? Are those things we proudly admit as values—loyalty, creativity, or honesty—really the same as the humbler or more self-interested desires we may keep to ourselves? The two—noble and mundane—even seem to contradict and oppose one another quite often.
All this forms a recurring theme of the human experience: being torn between the contradictory demands of our different parts and pieces. To count among our values only those pretty aspirational things we can discuss in polite company is to miss the deeper predicament and challenge of value discourse. Much of our nature still shapes motivation underneath the respectable veneer. What do we actually value? That is, what are our values, really? Where do they come from? And how do we relate to our own, often contradictory, nature and desires?
These tensions—between declared and lived values, between high ideals and hidden idols—have haunted every era. Today, as the old approaches fail us, we are called to do more than curate and rationalize a new list of nice-sounding ideals. We must access the underlying logic that drives our collective destiny.
Values? Desires? Ideals? Why dig up these old conversations? It’s not necessarily that we are wiser than Confucius or Socrates. Rather, as post-postmodernists, we have a few advantages to put into play, and not much time left in the game. As the second quarter of the 21st century looms ahead, we must reengage with these perennial questions, seeking an approach truly equal to our unprecedented challenges. We need to break free of the assumptions of the past. But to do so with adequate care, we need the eyes to see the territory before and beneath us.
Our first move in this essay is to bring both clarity and honesty to the definition of values as the forces that move us, while differentiating between lived and nominal values. Through this approach, we will have to navigate various tensions, such as the one between value realism and value idealism.
Value Realism and Idealism
Value “realism” relates to the unpalatable so-called “reality” of human desires. In modernity, this is perhaps most powerfully captured by the discipline of economics. People must converge on an “exchange value” for objects and services, making value into something we must somehow quantify and compare. Is the value analyzed by the economist somehow related to that investigated by the philosopher? They seem to examine completely unrelated phenomena with coincidental terminological overlap. One is “value realism,” and the other “value idealism.”
Is the value of an object somehow related to cultural ideals? Can values be flattened into an equation—labor time, capital investment, or as determined by supply and demand? While these approaches are clearly overreductive,6 our expanded definition of values nevertheless reveals connections between these very different approaches to thinking of values—“realistic” and “idealistic.” At the very least, the landscape of lived values seems affected by these “real” forces (e.g., scarcity, advertisement, memetic desire) just as much as by cultural ideals.
This already hints at the multifaceted nature of values and the various forces that may influence them, as the full complexity of the issue looms into view.
Values act like attractors and repellents. Electrons are attracted to protons and repelled by other electrons. Such is the electron’s field of value, so to speak. As we shall see, we humans navigate a more complex, multidimensional “magnetic field”—one entangled with sociocultural and other forces. All such nuance is lost when we adopt either the usual “realistic” approach—flattening values into models—or the “idealistic” approach—listing and rationalizing abstract ideals.
Values can be adequately examined by neither economists nor philosophers in isolation. Values may be instrumental or direct, socially condoned, condemned, celebrated, manipulated, or sublimated; explicit or implicit, deliberate or unexamined, refined or coarse. As such, values present us with a whole existential landscape—one that may itself be transformed by our examination. While ethical questions can take social realities or some specific value system for granted, investigating the very nature of value may prove to be more revealing—and potentially, more subversive.
By the end of this series, we will have synthesized this complexity into a powerful map and gained the vision to recognize the fields of values in which we all swim.
Meta-Awareness and the Road Ahead
A post-postmodern project is essentially reconstructive. It attempts to resolve the critical, open questions lingering in (post)modernity. In Simplicity Complicity, we arrived at a post-postmodern existential stance toward the stories through which we frame the world—a meta-aware relationship. Now, we continue this investigation by examining the undercurrents that shape our stories—our values—in search of a similarly meta-aware stance toward this subtler level. But what does meta-awareness mean here?
Meta-awareness is the capacity to recognize value systems7 as such, enabling one to step outside of an inherited value system and view it with some objective distance. This move—which enables seeing a value system, rather than merely seeing from it—marks the beginning of critical analysis and genuine choice.
This “meta” move was already taken in postmodernity, to objectify and criticize the modern value system. But meta-awareness can—and perhaps should—lead to more than mere impartiality and relativism. Systematically investigating different value systems may reveal a deeper logic running through them all. More than merely objectifying value systems while drifting between them, by the end of this series, we will have established newfound clarity about the nature of values as such. This enables something that the postmodern approach is incapable of providing, and at its extremes explicitly rejects—the ability to discriminate between, synthesize, and even create value systems.
By the end of this journey, we will be able to reorient ourselves—and our societies—around clarified values, carefully and deliberately. Indeed, this clarity is a prerequisite for any future worth pursuing.
To Be Continued…
This is an essay series about values, moving toward a novel, post-postmodern stance—one that enables genuine value clarification through a universal grammar of values.8
Using our post-postmodern approach, it will become abundantly clear where we stand, both individually and collectively. In the next chapter, we will examine our situation through the lens of the value crisis. What are the open questions we must grapple with?
After diagnosing our present, we will trace the shifting tides of value across generations in Part 2. We will examine what has been lost and gained over the course of rolling centuries and millennia—situating our current place and time within a history of values.
The task ahead is to understand—historically and existentially—how our value crisis arose, and how we can recover the discernment required to move toward futures worth having. We do not offer definitive answers, such as “the ultimate value system”; rather, we aim to reframe value discourse, launching a new way to think and talk about values. Above all, we must learn anew how to recognize what does and does not matter—through active value clarification. Values orient us in the world. Leaving them unexamined is tantamount to driving without a steering wheel, moving on sheer momentum.
Whether you are a thinker, leader, or citizen seeking clarity in uncertain times, this is an invitation to join a conversation meant to reorient us, individually and collectively. Join us on this journey to reframe value discourse—for the sake of futures worth pursuing, for each of us and for all of us—right here in High Resolution.
Some readers may ask: What is “post-postmodernism?” To answer this, we must first clarify what is meant by “postmodernism,” and, before that, “modernism.” In short, modernity refers to the stage of history that followed the European Age of Enlightenment, which led to the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions and the current world order. Postmodernity is the phase of Western thought that became critical and cynical regarding the assumptions and consequences of modernity. Each of these stages has its characteristic insights and limitations. Post-postmodernism means moving beyond the limitations of both these movements. What this means, in practice, will become clear throughout this series.
The metacrisis (like the polycrisis, but with different emphases) implies the interconnected nature of the crises faced—and caused by—global modern civilization. These crises include war, poverty and inequality, the meaning crisis, species-level existential risks, ecological collapse, and more.
The study of values (axiology) can be traced at least as far back as Plato. After the Greeks, as we explore in Part 2, particular cultural value systems became entrenched, and direct study of values entered into “hibernation” until the early modern period. Axiology reemerged, but after a short period, it was again marginalized due to the analytical turn in philosophy, as well as the World Wars, which disrupted continental philosophy (and especially the German phenomenological school driving axiology). The abandonment of value exploration is traceable to both historical contingencies and postmodern developments discussed in the following chapters.
Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy focused on direct investigation of experience itself, rather than concepts or objects as such. This tradition, dissatisfied with attempts to rationalize ethics into mere rules (as with the Kantian project), investigates values as real, felt qualities in experience.
Defined this way, values are the forces that shape what cognitive scientist John Vervaeke terms the “salience landscape”—determining what stands out in our perception and thought, what is and isn’t relevant. For further discussion, see Vervaeke’s public lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis.
Of course, to the economist, being able to reduce all things into a single metric of exchange value is among the key features of money. It is this universality that allows all markets (labor, food, real estate, luxury goods, etc.) to run under a single economic sphere. Money allows us to compare apples and oranges (or drinking water and diamonds), so to speak. While the mechanism of money may obscure, rather than reveal, value, its practical force is unquestionable.
A value system is a particular structuring of values, positioned relative to one another, say in a hierarchy. A value system, properly conceived, reaches beneath the surface to include lived, private values, even if only nominal values are publicly acknowledged.
We adopt the term “universal grammar of values” from David J. Temple’s First Principles and First Values (see Part 3 for further discussion).
This is a really thought-provoking deep dive into the subject. The distinction you draw between nominal and lived values is particularly resonant !